Coming Up: A New Look, A New Podcast Show & A Few Bold and Daring Objectives
As always I am way behind in providing my promised quarterly update report for Boiling Frogs Post. And I don’t even know where to begin since so much has been happening during the last four months. I think I am going to apply one of my ‘make things more doable and less of a scary mammoth task’ principles here by breaking the information into small chunks, and presenting them one at a time. Usually this works for me, so let’s see how I do as I go forward.
Less than three months ago we added an incredible researcher to our team who is truly a rarity within the subject field- the field and the players of the New Great Game: US-Russia-China in the war over Central Asia & the Caucasus. I discovered Christoph Germann, who resides in Germany, via Twitter. I kept coming across his twits linked to news and developments in my area of interest. Every time I clicked on a link on his twit I would go ‘Wow, this is a great piece of info. – I have to include it in my BFP Nightly News.’ To make a long story short, I became Germann’s twitter stalker! After a few months of constant stalking I twitted him and asked him to contact me directly …And a week later, here he was, producing this incredible weekly report, The New Great Game Round Up, for Boiling Frogs Post. See, stalking pays off; well, sometimes. I am honored to have Christoph as part of our regular contributing team of writers and researchers, and from what I see, you do as well: A belated welcome to Christoph Germann and his great weekly report for BFP.
Also last June a young, educated, talented and very nice author contacted me about his exclusive recent interview series with Uber reporter Helen Thomas. Not only that, he happened to be Ms. Thomas’ nephew. We began communicating, and seeing his critical thinking ability expressed articulately in beautifully written material, I proposed to him, and he accepted. Welcome Mark Mondalek, who has been contributing great book reviews and articles exclusively to BFP. We are honored to have you, Mark. Seeing your talent, passion and abilities, I know we’ll be expanding our partnership into other ‘mutually-desired’ areas.
Last month we added another daring, bold, powerful, controversial …. weekly podcast show : De-Manufacturing Consent with Guillermo Jimenez. First, Guillermo invited me to his show- Traces of Reality, for an interview. Then, I went back to his site, randomly selected two shows, listened to both shows, and I was hooked. Great radio presence combined with a critical mind, politically independent position, daring …Well, if you have listened to his shows, whether here at BFP or at his website, then you know what I’m talking about. In no time I was proposing to Guillermo (I’ve become quite good at this proposing business; I think!), and lucky for us, he accepted. Thank you, Guillermo!
Next month, in September, we are going to have a brand new BFP exclusive weekly podcast show produced by the star of all radio-podcast shows: Peter B. Collins. I really mean it when I qualify Peter as the Uber radio host. With 30-years of experience as a professional radio talk show host, a voice and delivery unmatched by anyone in this industry (I dare anyone to find one who matches!), a mind that never quits working, an ability to research and absorb and do so with such speed, a style so gracious yet daring, and a great personality … Peter has had me as one of his greatest fans, with admiration that has been increasing nonstop since I was his guest for the first time almost ten years ago. I still remember proposing to Peter four years ago, when this website was a tiny little ‘blogspot.com’ site with only me, Paul Jamiol, and a dozen supporting visitors. I had to gather all my courage for that proposal: The great Peter B. Collins and this tiny little forum run by little me?! He was gracious to accept it then, as he was gracious to accept this coming show recently. We’ll still continue our joint show, Boiling Frogs Show, and publish Peter’s new show separately on Mondays. The title of the new show is “Peter B. Collins: Processing Distortion.”
James Corbett and I are discussing some exciting ideas for a brand new weekly video show as well. We are thinking a mixture of debate and expansion of each week’s headline items … I don’t want to give away too much at this point, but as you may already expect, it will be bold and on controversial topics with stellar guests. When will we launch this new show? Well, it all depends on how successful we are going to be in raising the needed funds with subscriptions and donations in the next few months; meaning, it will depend on you BFP supporters.
James, Paul Jamiol and I have been working on our new DVD, BFP DVD #3. The DVD will cover our four-part series on Psyops, two bonus features on the phony Drug War and nuclear black market, an exclusive interview with our new partner Guillermo Jimenez, and of course, a selection of the latest Jamiol political cartoons. I am shooting for early November – we are doing our best to bring this DVD to you before the holidays- fingers crossed.
Okay, now an update on the technology and website front. If you could see me right now, you’d notice how my body and facial expression quickly changed. This is so not my area. I have always been technologically un-savvy (that’s an adjective as of now!). Every time the topic comes up I get self-conscious, nervous, and then I want to just run and go hide somewhere. I always want the topic of website technical matters to somehow go away and disappear. It never happens. Almost daily, I have to face the monster in the room-one way or another. So, I am going to make this part quick. OK?
Let’s start with an easy one: something I can comprehend a little. If you have noticed our site has been running much faster. Fast: something I understand. It used to take us a long time to even put up a post due to extremely slow server response and an outdated WP version. I now even know what WP stands for: WordPress (Yay me!). We updated our WP to the latest version, and we moved from a shared server to a dedicated server. Of course our monthly cost increased 6 or 7 fold, but the excruciating posting process and Dashboard response lag went away, and our site visitors have been pleased with the site response speed.
This month we hired our trusted website designer Scott and his team to re-design the website and give it a long-needed face lift and up-to-date functionality. We are aiming for this coming October to launch the new BFP look. Of course, having to consider time and cost, we are treating this as phase 1 of the site design change. The new site will solve the problem of our popular and multimedia posts disappearing from the homepage: We’ll present those posts as a slide show at the top of the homepage. We’ll have a much better presented BFP Nightly News format. We’ll have a much better search ability (Database). Also, don’t think I haven’t been hearing your screams on the comments functions (or lack of). We’ll have a much better comments section: Threaded/nested comments (so we don’t have to do this ridiculous @XYZ business!!), edit and spell-check function (Didn’t I tell you I’ve been hearing your screams?;-), and more. Of course, we’ll have more polished graphics and displays, and better store and shopping cart tools.
The site design change is going to take several people several months, and it is going to come at a cost. Needed and worth it, but somehow still has to be managed and taken care of. We are going to do our best to test and de-bug the new site before going live, but even with that some occasional problems will be inevitable, so your patience and support will be needed during that initial launch period.
I believe I have pretty much covered recent developments and those to come in the next couple of months. Now I want to briefly discuss our operation and larger objectives.
For those of you who are new to this website, we operate on a partnership basis. This website is a joint operation of our partner producers and authors. Our revenue is solely based on our readers and audience supporters’ subscriptions and donations. We do not receive a single dime from any foundations, mega-contributors, NGOs, or corporate advertisers. With that, all the revenue we receive in the form of member subscriptions and individual donations is divided among our partners based on seniority and the amount of time invested. Every month we pay our partners for BFP podcast shows, video reports, political cartoons, book reviews, and exclusive articles.
Considering this, for those people who have zero understanding of how things work in life, thus demand that everything on the internet be free, including quality radio or video reports, I have a brief comment. The choice for us is never “Should we produce these things for free or not.” The choice is: “Do we go to work full-time to enable a roof over our heads and bread on our tables to feed our families and NOT have the time to engage in activism and production to inform, OR, do we manage to survive based on our readers’ committed subscriptions and donations, forego much-better paying jobs and careers, and spend the needed time and energy on producing and writing to inform?”
So, unless a website entity is backed by always-agenda-driven rich foundations and NGOs, or, agenda-driven corporate advertisers, the only way we can spend all the needed time to produce, write, and manage is through our individual readers-supporters.
Let me give you an example: One of our senior partners quit his full-time teaching job in order to focus full-time on ‘informing and producing real news.’ His full-time job may have gone away, but his rent and food and other survival needs for him and his family, including child/children, remained the same.
Same goes for me. Last year I stopped my yearly contract work (translation and analyst) and lost the needed income that came with it. As a family of three, with a 5-yr old, we too need to take care of our housing, food, clothing, medical needs … I spend on average 6 to 7 hours, seven days a week, on this website. On average it takes me 3 to 4 hours of nonstop work (research, read, collect and prepare) every day to bring to you very comprehensive propaganda-free World and National News and Select Editorials mainly from non-mainstream sources – while always excluding the well-known propaganda sources such as BBC, NY Times, Wash Post, News Week, Time, CNN, etc.
Therefore the choice is NOT whether to provide high-quality daily podcasts and videos and news and articles for free, or, to provide all that based on a subscription model. The real choice is whether to go out into the workforce, commute and work full-time, for the needed income and insurance and 401K (as does the majority) and NOT be able to have a site like this, Or, forego the guaranteed work and income, depend on regular readers’ support, and bring to you this unique independent information site.
As for my main macro objective: What I am striving for is to expand this website and increase the financial support through our generous subscribers to a level where we can hire and work with our own very independent investigative reporters for international and national news. Is it a highly ambitious goal considering there exists not even one entity that has achieved this without being a 501 C (3), without receiving string-attached funds from foundations and partisan organizations, or, deep-pocket corporate advertisers?
Yes. It certainly is. On the other hand, look how far we have come without those poisonous entities: several high-quality weekly podcast shows, independent and unmatched weekly investigative video reports, stellar daring editorials and analyses, weekday nightly news from non-mainstream sources, exclusive hard-hitting political cartoons, exclusive bi-monthly book reviews, and more! And we have accomplished all this with your support and commitment through your subscriptions. Thus, I know, working together, we’ll achieve more.
Next week we’ll begin our quarterly fundraising for fall 2013. We depend and count on you to support us for a successful campaign. Please tell others about Boiling Frogs Post, who we are, what we do, and why. Invite them to join our home of the irate minority by subscribing to our website. Together we can achieve a lot. So, let’s do it.
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